Halbe Zijlstra

VVD party leader Halbe Zijlstra thinks the plan to close the EU's border to asylum seekers is a great plan. But as they are bound by the coalition agreement, he can not force the PvdA to accept something that is not in the coalition agreement, Zijlstra said to BNR.

Parliamentarians in the Tweede Kamer (lower house of parliament) understand Minister Ivo Opstelten and State Secretary Fred Teeven's (Security and Justice) decision to resign. The two handed in their resignations because of discrepancies in details given to the Tweede Kamer regarding a 4.7 million guilder payout to drug criminal Cees H. that Teeven approved during his time as prosecutor in 2001.

VVD parliamentarian Mark Verheijen has decided to resign from the Tweede Kamer (lower house of parliament) following the results of the integrity commission's investigation into his declarations, the party announced on their website.

Labour party PvdA leader Diederik Samsom accused anti-Islam PVV leader Geert Wilders of being as manipulative as terrorists in parliamentary debate Wednesday night. Samsom said that Wilders “does precisely the same as what the terrorists do: spread hatred, fear and division.”

After three days of crisis over Minister Edith Schippers' (Public Health) rejected healthcare law, the VVD and PvdA reached a compromise and the impending fall of the government was averted. The three allied opposition parties, the D66, SGP and ChristenUnie, still have some major concerns.

Despite three Labour Senators saying they are still not prepared to vote in favour of a new legislative action that would limit the rights of medical patients, the prospect of a solution is apparently in sight. The crisis began Tuesday night when the three senators voted against health care legislation supported by the coalition government.

Disgraced, dismissed, and discredited, 50Plus parliamentarian and Friends of Gay Krant Founder Henk Krol has again come under fire after it emerged on Monday that he artificially inflated circulation figures of his magazine Gay Krant, which was placed into bankruptcy in March 2013. According to Gay Krant shareholder Marc Putman, Krol continually told advertisers that the Gay Krant had a circulation of around 60,000 subscribers.

VVD party leader Halbe Zilstra says that this coming year will be the year of truth. The new European Union will have to act. If they don't, the European project will be a thing of the past, Zilstra expects.

Coalition party VVD has said that the jobs plan presented by labour unions earlier this week is an "idiotic" plan that destroys jobs, and is therefore unspeakable. VVD-faction president Halbe Zijlstra says in an interview with De Telegraaf that the PvdA should also take distance from the proposals.

D66 leader Alexander Pechtold is most suitable to follow up current Prime Minister Mark Rutte is believed by voters. Pechtold scored highest out of the six group leaders with a score of 5.6. This was announced by market research office Ipsos on Thursday after they did research on the topic.

VVD-leader Halbe Zijlstra is saying that the current tax system needs to be overhauled in favor of simplicity. The party told the cabinet that all allowances must be abolished and transformed into lower taxes. The Tax Administration must focus on the core task: collecting money.

Undocumented people living in the Netherlands will not be treated as criminals, the coalition government announced today. The VVD-backed proposal had been a major sticking point between the VVD and PvdA, the majority parties in the lower house, and ChristenUnie, the party the coalition relies on for support in the upper house.

The new proposal, which Jeroen Dijsselbloem sent to the opposition discussion partners, was not good enough for the CDA and they will not continue with the negotiations for an acceptable budget which can count on a majority in the Senate.

“Stop these kind of calls to citizens,” said VVD leader Halbe Zijlstra to Jeroen Dijsselbloem Minister of Finance and his ‘own’ VVD Prime Minister Mark Rutte today. In the Telegraaf he says he doesn’t agree with the request of the government and coalition partner PvdA, to let citizens use their money to stimulate the economy. Zijlstra starts with his criticism, a round of new negotiations between the coalition partners in order to fill in the extra 6 billion euro of cuts this autumn.

While negotiating the new cuts for 2014, the Labour Party would like to pump billions of euros of potted money into the economy. This is evident from an interview with Labour leader Diederik Samsom in the Volkskrant. Jeroen Dijsselbloem Minister of Finance joins the vision of his party leader. According Dijsselbloem it is now necessary to boost the economy and it is interesting to try to 'mobilize' the potted capital. He said Tuesday at RTL Z.